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(CNN) -- The number of people potentially embroiled in the Boston Marathon bombings case grew Wednesday to include friends of surviving suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Not much is known yet about the three 19-year-old men -- Azamat Tazhayakov, Dias Kadyrbayev and Robel Phillipos. But here is what CNN has learned so far. All started at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth in 2011, along with Tsarnaev. Each is accused of removing items from Tsarnaev's dorm room after the April 15 attack, which killed three people and wounded more than 260.

The shadowy Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani recently visited Moscow to meet with senior Russian leaders, according to two Western intelligence sources, despite a travel ban and U.N. Security Council resolutions barring him from leaving Iran. On July 24, one week before State Secretary John Kerry testified to Senate Armed Services Committee and faced questions about the newly struck nuclear deal, Soleimani arrived in Moscow for meetings with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and President Vladimir Putin. It was not immediately clear what the Iranian leader discussed, but the revelation comes as the United Nations and European Union arms...

Iranian militia leader Hadi al-Amiri, one of several identified as leading an attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, reportedly visited the White House in 2011 during the presidency of Barack Obama. On Tuesday, a mob in Baghdad attacked the U.S. embassy in retaliation against last weekend’s U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah (KH), responsible for killing an American civilian contractor. KH is one of a number of pro-Iran militias that make up the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/PMU), which legally became a wing of the Iraqi military after fighting the Sunni Islamic State terrorist group....

Director John Brennan has ordered a sweeping reorganization of the CIA, an overhaul designed to make its leaders more accountable and close espionage gaps amid widespread concerns about the spy agency’s limited insights into a series of major global developments. Brennan announced the restructuring to the CIA workforce on Friday, including a new directorate devoted to boosting the CIA’s computer hacking skills. He said the move comes after nine agency officers spent three months analyzing its management structure, including what deputy CIA director David Cohen called “pain points,” organizational areas where the CIA’s bureaucracy does not work efficiently. […] The...

Michelle Obama has a special relationship with her two daughters, Malia, 21, and Sasha, 18. During her interview with People last year, the ex-FLOTUS revealed that she didn’t weep when she dropped off her eldest daughter at Harvard. Barack Obama’s wife said that being away from her daughters doesn’t make her sad because she has the resources to see them whenever she misses them. The former first lady also revealed that she regularly texts with her daughters. And she and her eldest child have a special connection. “I can text [Malia] right this second and know exactly what she’s thinking....

Years before more than a hundred media outlets around the world released stories Sunday exposing a massive network of global tax evasion detailed in the so-called Panama Papers, U.S. President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed for a Bush administration-negotiated free trade agreement that watchdogs warned would only make the situation worse. .... while Obama championed his commitment to raise taxes on the wealthy, he pursued and eventually signed the Panama agreement in 2011. Upon Congress ratifying the pact, Clinton issued a statement lauding the agreement.... Critics, however, said the pact would make it easier for rich...

This month’s announcement from Party City that it’s closing more than 40 stores as it grapples with new challenges, including diminishing helium supplies, likely came as unwelcome news to customers who count on the store for their balloon and event planning needs. But for scientists like Mark Elsesser, the announcement was something of a relief, inflating hopes that the public, and the government, might start paying closer attention. “When it comes to helium, we’re at a tipping point,” said Elsesser, who is the associate director of government affairs at the American Physical Society, a nonprofit association of physicists. “Party City...

In 2011, (Hunter, a collage friend John Glanis, a/k/a “Yanni,” Devon Archer, and Chris Heinz (stepson of SoS (Hero of tue Mekong, John Kerry), had formed a $2.4 billion private equity firm, Rosemont Seneca Partners. RSP, joined C0m China, just hours before Hunter’s dad, would meet with Hu Jintao, then China's president, in a “nuclear security” summit. 2014, Hunter and Yanni, joined the board of Burisma Holdings, joined Zlochevsky’s Ukrainian gas and UK money laundering. Chris Heinz wanted a full share, but lacking area value, was told “no”. Chris snivvles to stepsi, after his long time partners, cut a deal...

Jeffrey Epstein, a powerful pedophile who got a pass from multiple justice systems, until his luck ran out, is dead. These are bits and pieces of a much bigger picture about the powerful relationships that he maintained with some very powerful people. We know that Epstein had a relationship with Bill Gates that was compelling enough to get the Microsoft kingpin to donate millions on his behalf. In October, 2014, the Media Lab received a two-million-dollar donation from Bill Gates; Ito wrote in an internal e-mail, “This is a $2M gift from Bill Gates directed by Jeffrey Epstein.” Cohen replied,...

The former CDF prefect said Catholics had a right to know the truth about the accusationsCardinal Gerhard Müller, the former prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), has urged Pope Francis to “look for reconciliation” with his critic Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. Speaking to EWTN’s The World Over programme, the German cardinal called on the Pope to “give answers to [his] accusations or questions”, saying: “The people of God have a right to know what happened.” Archbishop Viganò, the former US nuncio, has accused Pope Francis of ignoring sanctions imposed on ex-cardinal Theodore McCarrick by Benedict...

Ulrich Klopfer who faces charges that he delayed reporting an abortion on a 13-year-old girl in South Bend, Indiana, may be able to avoid jail time if he does this one little thing. Indiana law requires reports on abortions done on unborn babies of girls younger than 14 to be submitted within three days. Further endangering a teen who had already been victimized by statutory rape, Klopfer submitted the report six months after the abortion, according to state records. Klopfer potentially faces a fine of $1,000 and 180 days in jail if convicted of the Class B misdemeanor. But the...

Barack Obama has come under fire for extending a formal invitation to a shamed African dictator who has ruthlessly plundered billions of dollars from his own country. The U.S. President will today have a coveted private meeting with President Ali Bongo of Gabon in the Oval Office despite his appalling track record. Bongo’s family has ruled the impoverished African nation with an iron fist for five decades and have used its oil riches to fund a life of outrageous luxury. Meanwhile one third of people in Gabon live on less than $2 a day and thousands starve to death each...

Records recently posted online by the FBI indicate that it did little to investigate allegations from private sources connected to Republicans about a scheme in which associates of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to exploit their connection to her to profit from the turmoil in Libya in 2011. The FBI received the documents in June 2016, around the same time it launched an exhaustive, three-year investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia based, in part, on information from private sources connected to Democrats that in the main would prove to be false – the Steele dossier. ... Why...

Who is Brett Kimberlin? Brett Kimberlin, also known as the "Speedway Bomber," is the infamous male who set an Indiana town ablaze with a series of coordinated bombings in 1978. The man behind the madness was also convicted of thirty three additional crimes, including illegal use of a Department of Defense insignia, and the Presidential Seal, both of which were used to procure the hard-to-come-by explosives used in the bombings. As a result, Kimberlin served a 17 year prison sentence, in which time he mastered his skills of persuasion by earning a law degree, which he reportedly uses routinely. A...

"Epstein travelled to Cuba at Castro's invitation...former Colombian President [Andres Pastrana] says..." [Quoting from Miami Herald.] "In Cuba, the link between tourism and prostitution is perhaps more direct than in any other country that hosts sex tourists," reported the End Child Prostitution in Asian Tourism Network..." In fairness, Epstein visited the Castro-family-fiefdom before the sex-abuse allegations against him surfaced. And the chances are the going rates of desperate child prostitutes per hour (extremely low in Cuba) weren't a major consideration for this multi-millionaire...but still.

On the morning of Jeffrey Epstein's death there was shouting and shrieking from his jail cell, a source familiar with the situation told CBS News. Corrections officers attempted to revive him while saying "breathe, Epstein, breathe." Congress is the latest to start investigating Epstein's apparent suicide over the weekend, with new reports raising questions about the federal jail where he was being held. One of Epstein's guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center on the night he died was reportedly not a regular corrections officer. On Monday, Attorney General William Barr criticized the detention center where the disgraced financier was held....

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal appeals court [the Second Circuit Court of Appeals with jurisdiction over New York] revived former U.S. vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against the New York Times, over an editorial that she said maliciously linked her to the 2011 mass shooting that seriously wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords.

Court documents recently filed by the government further rock the credibility of Russia Special Counsel Robert Mueller because they show that as FBI Director Mueller he worked to cover up the connection between a Florida Saudi family and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The documents reveal that Mueller was likely involved in publicly releasing deceptive official agency statements about a secret investigation of the Saudis, who lived in Sarasota, with ties to the hijackers. A Florida journalism nonprofit uncovered the existence of the secret FBI investigation that was also kept from Congress. Under Mueller’s leadership, the FBI tried to discredit the...

Feb. 28 (UPI) -- The United States is offering $1 million for information on the whereabouts of Osama Bin Laden's son. The State Department said in a notice Thursday that Hamza Bin Laden is "emerging as a leader" of terrorist organization al-Qaida and is offering the reward through its "rewards justice" program for any information on his location in any country. The announcement said that since August 2015, Hamza has released audio and video messages on the Internet encouraging his followers to "launch attacks against the United States and Western allies." He has also threatened attacks against America for killing...

Bill and Chelsea Clinton’s “office crap” nearly drove the Clinton Foundation’s chief operating officer to commit suicide in 2011, according to hacked emails released by WikiLeaks. Former President Bill Clinton’s chief adviser at the time, Doug Band, sent an email to the former president’s staff involved with the Clinton Foundation that he talked the nonprofit’s COO, Laura Graham, out of ending her life.